Wide Awake- “Earth is Crammed with Heaven” is the message we are working through at church. The series is about how there is so much going on but we need to take time to look at the little things and see heaven in our everyday lives. I think this message is fabulous for the beginning of the year, when everything seems so crazy and life is going a million miles a minute it is so easy to lose focus on what really matters. The first sermon was about Your Burning Bush looking at Exodus 3:1-6 and Moses seeing the burning bush.
Pete talks about how Moses had probably walked past this bush or bushes just like it over and over again and probably never thought anything of the bushes but after this burning bush moment he probably never thought about a bush the same. The Message, Wide Awake is about getting to the place where you are constantly living with your spiritual eyes open and you are seeing God in this world in ways you never have seen God and in places you never have before.
“Earth is crammed with heaven and every burning bush afire with God but only he who sees takes off his shoes.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning. There are many, many moments here on earth that are just filled with God’s presence but we miss them. We miss sunsets and rainbows and ladybugs and butterflies, children laughing and so much more because we are too focused on our lives or work or what we need to get done and we just miss the God Moments because we are not paying attention. We need to look at the ordinary moments because they are filled with His presence.
How can I begin to live with the conscious presence of the awareness of God in my life? In all the different aspects of my life? To be wide awake to God’s presence in this world.
I left this sermon inspired. You can watch it here. I am inspired to look at every moment differently and see God in everything, including the mundane and the ordinary. This sermon really reminded me of the book, One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. I am currently in the middle of reading this book and it makes me think how ironic it is I am reading the book when the series comes up. They fit perfectly together and remind me that God truly is in the ordinary, in the everyday, in every moment of my life and I am going to find Him.
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